Thought experiment: Do you feel at least slightly more anxious today than six months ago? Do you feel at least slightly more skeptical that what you're reading is real and true than six months ago?

• Why it matters: Join the club. We've been asking people that as we travel the country. Almost everyone nods — regardless of age, region or education. Here's why: This election combines the worst of 2016 with the worst of 2020, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

🖼️ The big picture: Fake news — a concept seared into the American psyche during the 2016 campaign, when Donald Trump tried to discredit real reporting — has exploded in sophistication and scale.

• Political violence, a taboo shattered in the wake of the 2020 election, now threatens U.S. democracy — and candidates — in chilling ways.
• Underpinning it all is growing mistrust of government — and falling trust in institutions of all kinds.

Zoom in: Axios' Zachary Basu has elegantly synthesized the many ways both problems are worsening in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. Think about the last week alone:

• Former President Trump survived a second assassination attempt. Then, rather than call for unity as he briefly did after being shot in July, he and his allies explicitly blamed Democrats for the threats on his life.
• Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on X, drew the attention of the Secret Service with a now-deleted post suggesting it was odd that "no one is even trying to assassinate" Vice President Harris or President Biden.
• An Alaska man was charged this week with threatening to torture and kill six Supreme Court justices — the latest in what the Justice Department called an "unprecedented" level of threats against public officials.

🔎 Between the lines: Members of Congress are especially open to increasing the Secret Service budget for a scary reason: their own experiences with growing threats and startling security breaches, Axios' Andrew Solender reported this week.

• 60% of U.S. adults find it stressful and frustrating to discuss politics with people who hold different views — up 10 points from the relatively innocent days of 2019, before rampant election denialism, a Pew Research poll found.
• And 60% of Americans limit how much political news they consume to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a poll out last week from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
• The American Psychological Society even has a term for it: "political stress." Politics "is increasingly recognized as a significant source of chronic stress, affecting both mental and physical health negatively across a broad swath of the population," the association says.

Now turn to America's mounting swamp of misinformation:

• Trump used the national debate stage to spread fake news: Haitians in Ohio are eating pet dogs and cats. A week later, his allies are still at it — even after a flood of fact checks and bomb threats.
• X is overflowing with conspiracy garbage, often promoted by people who should know better: Musk shared a fake Trump rally bomb threat this week that could have been debunked with one more click.
• Trump's lies are growing more frequent and more bizarre: Over the past month, the former president has told at least 12 "completely fictional" stories, according to a detailed CNN rundown.
• Harris' campaign has been guilty of its own fake-news offenses, using the popular @KamalaHQ social media account to post misleading clips about Trump and Republicans on several occasions — more of a cynical campaign tactic than a sustained misinformation effort.

🥊 Reality check: Trump is unique in his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election unless he wins — as was the case in 2020. That alone is a source of incalculable alarm for many ordinary Americans.

• Like 2020, the 2024 election could take days to call because of razor-thin margins and counting procedures in the most important swing states.
• Like 2016, when prosecuting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a rallying cry for Trump supporters, the convicted former president's personal fate is looming large over the country and the election.
• And like 2020 and 2016, a few hundred thousand votes in just a few states are expected to decide the winner.

🔭 Zoom out: The threat of election chaos has been turbocharged by widespread distrust in politicians, the media and institutions. Foreign actors, as in 2016 and 2020, are taking notice.

• Iranian hackers penetrated Trump's campaign and sent stolen emails over the summer to media outlets and people associated with the Biden campaign, the FBI said this week.
• Russia has stepped up efforts to sow discord and undermine the Harris campaign, including by allegedly paying popular pro-Trump influencers through a shell company.

The bottom line: Not to be downers, but end with this thought experiment: How confident are you that the election results will be seen as valid, unpolluted by fake news and free of political violence?

• If you're like most Americans, you're bracing for the worst.
• 67% expressed anxiety about the election in a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll. 60% cited "political violence" as the election outcome they're most anxious about.

Share this column.

From bulletproof glass to panic buttons, election officials across the U.S. are taking unprecedented steps to protect poll workers and ballots, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.

• Why it matters: The moves are stark reminders of how Donald Trump's allegations of rigged elections have undermined trust and made election officials — many of them volunteers — the focus of suspicion and threats.

Officials are already on edge: This week, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service launched an investigation after officials in 16 states reported receiving suspicious packages.

• Several secretaries of state reported being mailed letters containing white powder.

👓 Zoom in: Election officials in Durham County, N.C., soon will move into a new building equipped with bulletproof glass at the front desk, panic buttons to summon help in any emergencies, a network of security cameras and a separate exhaust system where mail-in ballots will be processed.

• On Election Day, each of the county's 59 polling site coordinators will receive employee badges with panic buttons.
• GPS tracking will be used to follow ballots' chain of custody as they're escorted from polling places to county offices.
• At the end of the night, the chief election judge at each polling place will take ballots to the county's election headquarters with an escort — an election judge from the opposite party.

Keep reading.

Former President Trump's campaign is alarmed that Republican nominee for governor Mark Robinson's political baggage will be a drag on Trump's prospects in North Carolina, Axios' Sophia Cai and Lucille Sherman write.

• Why it matters: North Carolina is a must-win for Trump. A poor showing in the state, which has voted Republican in 10 of the last 11 presidential contests, could signify a losing night on Nov. 5.

The Trump campaign distanced itself from Robinson yesterday as CNN reported that Robinson referred to himself as a "black NAZI!" and a "perv" online and expressed support for reinstating slavery.

• Trump has — until now — lavished praise on Robinson, once praising him as "Martin Luther King on steroids" and musing that Robinson could one day be president.
• A midnight deadline for Robinson to exit the governor's race with no movement.

🎨 The big picture: Team Trump's concerns began earlier than this week and were more deeply rooted. The latest revelations were just the last straw.

• RNC Chair Michael Whatley has previously acknowledged that polls showed Robinson running behind Trump in North Carolina — a sign that Robinson might undermine votes for Trump.

Share this story.

The S&P 500 finished up 1.7% a day after the Fed announced its half-point rate cut.

• The Dow (+1.2%) also hit a new high.

Stunning stat: It was the S&P 500's 39th record day of the year, Bloomberg notes.

🫏 Vice President Harris, during an interview last night with Oprah Winfrey, on owning a gun: "If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot. ... I probably should not have said that — my staff will deal with that later." Watch the clip ... Keep reading.

🐘 Former President Trump at an event on fighting antisemitism: "In my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss" on Election Day, referring to Jews who vote for Democrats. Watch the clip ... Keep reading.

President Biden today will hold his first formal Cabinet meeting in eleven months, and direct members to speed up efforts to implement his agenda, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

• Biden "will direct his Cabinet to get to work and make the next four months as productive as any other period in our administration," a White House official tells us.

Why it matters: Time is running out on Biden's presidency (122½ days!) There's no guarantee Vice President Harris will replace him.

From implementing clean tech tax credits to spending billions of dollars to build roads, bridges and semiconductor facilities, top officials know that there's more work to do.

• Senior White House officials and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are also racing to beat former President Trump's record on confirming federal judges.

Share this story.

The Biden administration is highly concerned Israel's finance minister will cut Palestinian banks off from the Israeli financial system next month and cause an economic collapse in the occupied West Bank, two U.S. officials told Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Why it matters: The crash of the Palestinian banking system could bring down the Palestinian Authority, creating a power vacuum that could throw the West Bank into chaos and exacerbate the conflict in the region.

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist anti-Palestinian settler, has taken many steps over the last two years to weaken the Palestinian Authority as part of his ideology of annexing the West Bank

• Keep reading.

Baseball fans are watching two polar-opposite and historic events play out in real time:

1. Shohei Ohtani wrapping up one of the greatest feats the sport has ever seen.
2. The Chicago White Sox cementing their status as the worst team to ever step foot on a modern MLB field.

🐐 Ohtani — the L.A. Dodgers star — last night became the first major league player to hit at least 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in one year.

• Only five others have hit 40 home runs and stolen bases. Until this year, 50 was unthinkable.

🧦 The White Sox must win six of their last nine games to avoid breaking the record for most losses in a season.

• Watch Ohtani's record-breaking homer: "Greatest day in baseball history."